In the current Journal of Boardgame Design, the designers and publisher of Silk Road tell of the long road from original conception to publication.

I personally have always been interested in the story behind a game. What were the themes and mechanisms that first inspired the designer, and how did they evolve? When we look at a final product, how did the people involved decide what to put in and what to leave out?

For Ted Cheatham, this is his first published game. Ted tells a great story that carries us through both the creative decisions and the emotional experiences of shaping a game. Bruno Faidutti, well known as the designer of dozens of games including Citadels, Boomtown (with Bruno Cathala) and Diamant (with Alan Moon), enters the conversation at the same time he enters the story - bringing new life to a design that showed promise. Ever the professional, he describes exactly how he addressed the perceived dryness of the earlier design, introduced new themes, and brought the theme together with new mechanisms. Finally Zev Shlasinger of Z-Man Games tells what struck his interest in the game when it was submitted, and how he tweaked it into its current state.